


The Martyr

by Queen_Valkyrie



Series: Fake AH Origins [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, Immortal Fake AH Crew, fem!Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_Valkyrie/pseuds/Queen_Valkyrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Den Mother of the Fake AH Crew proves to have a more famous past than any of the other members.<br/>Who would have guessed Jack would be a Saint?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Martyr

May 30th, 1431.

Rouen, France.

Her skin burned from where the rope held her in place. Her hands behind her back, her ankles held fast to the wooden post, a particularly thick cord holding her neck in place.

 

She felt naked without the protection of her armor.  
Thought she refused to let her face show it, she was conflicted.

On the one hand, she was afraid to die. No one, her parents had told her many a time, deserved to die young. No one deserved to die at nineteen.

On the other, she knew it was her destiny. Margaret, Catherine, Michael… They had come to her. She was made for this. And if her life was the price for the freedom of France, then…

She swallowed hard.

Then so be it.

As the cardinal lowered the torch to the pyre below her feet, she closed her eyes and prayed to God that he would let it be quick.

But she knew it wouldn’t.

The smoke rose up around her, and she breathed in as much as she could.

Better to die of asphyxiation than of the pain of the flames.

Tears welled in her eyes and she started coughing uncontrollably.

The smoke made its way through her body, and was she not held fast to the wood by rope, the pain would have caused her to double over and curl herself up into a ball.

As she took her final breath, she stared at the Cardinal of Winchester, clothed in blood-red, through the smoke, and delivered him a triumphant grin.

Though she may not be there to see it, she knew her people would be victorious.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She woke in the middle of a shallow part of the Seine*, alive and well and soaking wet.

Her hands shot to her neck.

No rope.

None on her feet, either, and not even singed from the flames.

She was _alive_.

She had just been sentenced to death, and her sentence carried out, and she was _alive._

An incredulous laugh escaped her, but when the reality of her situation hit her, she wept. She wept for the family who believed she was dead.

She wept for longer than she would like to admit.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She lived on her own for years, and when her people won the Hundred-Years-War two decades later, she wept again, out of joy.

After her death, she wandered in France for years.

She learned Italian and Spanish and English from an old Spanish librarian, who died not long after she finished her studies.

When she learned she didn’t age, she moved to Paris and took the name Jacqueline.

As comeuppance for the wrongs they had committed against her countrymen, she robbed English nobles who still remained in the city and returned their wealth to the poor who needed it most.

She found she was rather good at thieving, and though the holy men of England’s Catholic Church looked down on the act, she knew the Lord would bless those who helped his children, rather than scorned them.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the French Revolution began in 1789, she fought again for the freedom of her people.

But when the common man started executing the nobles, even those who had never oppressed them, she became disgusted.

So she moved to America.

And she loved it.

It was new and bustling and exciting, though she swore never to let herself get too close to anyone. She didn’t think she could bear having to stand idly by while anyone else she cared about aged and died.

When she learned that there were few opportunities in America for women, she cut her hair short, started dressing as a man, and called herself Jack, developing a proper American accent along the way.

But the Americans too broke out into war.

She, of course, joined the side of freedom, enlisted as a part of the military in West Virginia.

She died again during the battle of Gettysburg, and when she awoke again, there was a dark-haired, scruffy-bearded man staring open-mouthed at her.

Letting a long sigh escape her, she softly cursed. “Shit.”

“Oh my god,” the other man breathed. He rushed over to Jack and grabbed her by the shoulders, his long fingers digging into her muscle. “Kid, what happened to you?”

“Nothing. I fell. Leave me alone.”

He rolled his dark blue eyes. “Don’t bullshit me, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!”

The man searched her face, and she noticed for a moment that he didn’t seem shocked so much as desperate.

“You just died,” he whispered. “Didn’t you.”

Her mouth fell open. “How did you--”

“Me too,” The dark-haired man smiled. “1779. Executed for traitorous actions against His Royal Majesty the King of Britain. I’m Geoff.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Ever since her first death in 1431, she had assumed her continued life was an act of Providence. Some sort of a calling, a purpose that she needed to stay alive for. But here was a man right in front of her eyes who knew she had survived death and faced the same predicament. So she held out her hand for him to shake. “Jack Pattillo. You got a last name?”

The man, Geoff, withdrew from her a moment and stared at the ground.

She supposed he had an alias as well.

It was only natural when one was unable to die.

“Ramsey,” he decided. “Geoff Ramsey.”

She smiled at him, the most genuine, relieved, hopeful smile since Rouen. “Nice to meet you.”  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a sort of game, she waited to see if he could deduce the fact that she was, in fact, not a man. It took him just over two decades.

When he discovered it, she laughed for a full quarter-hour, maybe more, and he glowered for longer than a grown man should ever be allowed.

She found out not much later that Geoff Ramsey was, in fact, a criminal.

But it had gotten to the point where, after her long years as a thief in Paris and (not to her pride) a pickpocket in order to obtain the money she needed for the trip to America, she didn’t mind so much.

In 1920, when she was officially declared a saint by the Catholic Church, she burst out into roaring laughter.

Though she was still religious, she had been significantly un-saint-like for centuries.

She and Geoff started a bootlegging business in Texas during Prohibition, and they proved to be rather skilled at organized crime.

They lost one of their best drivers in 1926, and though Jack never knew the fellow redhead’s name, she had had many pleasant conversations with the younger woman.

They stayed in Texas for a few decades until they up and moved to Los Santos, California, where their crew of immortals grew from two to nine.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And every once in a while, Jack Pattillo reflected on her life.

She had thought, in 1431, when she died and came back nonetheless, that her family was gone forever.

Yet here they were. Her family. Her broken, dysfunctional, criminal, loving family.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you guys didn't guess, Jack is Joan of Arc.  
> You know.  
> The famous French female warrior. And Saint. And figure whom Jaune Arc from RWBY is based on.
> 
> *The Seine is a river in France, and it runs right next to the town of Rouen, where Joan of Arc was executed.


End file.
